


So Show Me Family

by isozyme



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 06:52:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3519566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isozyme/pseuds/isozyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Tony shrugs super casually.  "Sure.  Sure, dogs, who doesn't like dogs, let's build a picket fence and go jogging, it'll look great for the press.  Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Puppy Rescuers, who doesn't love that as a headline, right?"  It's a golden retriever puppy, completely disarming and still fuzzy with its baby fur.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Tony does not like dogs.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Show Me Family

**Author's Note:**

> For a [really dear friend](http://piggybunny12.tumblr.com/) who deserves only nice things!
> 
> Set vaguely post-Avengers where everyone non-canonically lives in the tower together.

The puppy arrives at Avengers tower cradled in Bruce's arms, chewing contentedly on his phone case.  (Tony notes appreciatively that the case is handling the focused application of puppy teeth admirably, and makes a note to fast track the material to body-armor prototype testing asap.)

Bruce jostles the puppy tighter against his chest and says apologetically, "he was going to be my cousin's, but, luck would have it, turns out she's allergic.  He needs a place to stay while she finds a new home for him and I thought…"

Tony shrugs super casually.  "Sure.  Sure, dogs, who doesn't like dogs, let's build a picket fence and go jogging, it'll look great for the press.  Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Puppy Rescuers, who doesn't love that as a headline, right?"  It's a golden retriever puppy, completely disarming and still fuzzy with its baby fur.

Tony does not like dogs.

Everyone else does, to his surprise.  Bruce painstakingly puppy-proofs the main common area and informs the rest of the crew about the temporary presence of the dog.  This rouses the entire crew out of mid-afternoon sparring.  Tony hovers, because the puppy is going to pee on something expensive, he just _knows it_.

Steve and Natasha stride into the common room together, sweat-sheened from punching each other and gorgeous as usual.  Natasha kneels down to meet the puppy and her demeanor shifts instantly from effective killing machine to like, normal person with puppy happy; she even laughs and mimics the puppy's small whines and barks back at him.  Tony feels the usual lurch of admiration and unease at how easily she puts on each persona.  When Tony looks up at Steve the man has the gall to roll his eyes at Tony, like he's being paranoid and unreasonable which, no, Tony has a completely reasonable fear and respect of Natasha, even (especially) when she is being sweet.

Steve puts on his full _I am Captain America_ voice and says "I think this is a great opportunity for team bonding.  I never --"

Tony tries to glare with his _entire body_.  "Do you want to name him _Freedom_ and make him our mascot, Mr. Stars and Stripes?"

"Thanks, Tony," Steve says brightly.  "That's a great name for our dog.   Hey, everyone, Tony suggests we call the puppy Freedom, any opposition?"

The dog is officially named Freedom, to everyone's amusement (except Tony's).

Captain America is a _dick_.

Thor wants to know when Freedom will be large enough to ride.  When Bruce tries to explain that golden retrievers don't really get that big Thor mutters something about Asgardian superiority and pats the puppy consolingly on the head.

When Clint wanders in Tony is horrified to watch his eyes go misty.  "I missed having a dog," he says quietly, and sits rock-still on the couch while Freedom sleeps in his lap for hours.

"The dog isn't staying," Tony warns.  Everyone ignores him, but Tony is sure this will all blow over.  Nobody actually lives in a tower with a dog named Freedom.  Bruce will find a new home for the puppy and everyone will sniffle and hug the dog goodbye and everything will be fine.

 

*

 

Freedom chews on Steve's punching bags.

Freedom pees under Tony's workbench.

Freedom barks outside Natasha's room from 2:45 am to 5:00am every night for a week.

Freedom gets a persistent cough and has to be fed medicine hidden in cheese twice a day.

Freedom barfs up the medicine and cheese in _secret_ places.

Clint calmly explains,  "My philosophy is that you don't get a dog if you aren't ready for it to destroy everything you own.  That way, you aren't upset when the dog destroys most of the things you own."

Tony avoids the tower as much as possible because when he's home he ends up following Freedom around with a rag and a bottle of carpet stain remover.  Unfortunately, crime is down in New York City, and there's only so much time they can spend making appearances at clean-up efforts.  There's parts of the city that still reek of space-whale and Tony is tired of using his suit as a flashy one-man construction unit.

It's just that Tony _doesn't like dogs_ , right?  He doesn't like cute little balls of fluff in a supermodel's handbag and he doesn't like strong-jawed K9 units in flack jackets, he just doesn't and he knows that's weird and unmasculine and un-American but he's not into dogs, okay?

His parents weren't dog people so Tony's not a dog person.  Tony is a robot person.  Robots never barf in secret places.  When a robot makes a mess it's immediately obvious.  And anyway it's not the robot's fault, it doesn't know better.

Steve, because he is their glorious leader, notices that Tony is unhappy.  Because he is an interfering busybody who needs to feel superior to everyone, he also feels the need to bring it up.

Tony gets cornered trying to take his convertible out after a satisfying all-nighter re-programming the suit's release security protocols.  The sun's come up bright and clear and he needs some air.  He's about to tell Jarvis to open up the sliding garage door so he can go out on a drive, a nice, _alone_ drive, when Steve hauls the door open himself with his freakish muscles.  He stands haloed by bright morning sunlight and pulls off his oh-so-retro sunglasses to squint into the dim garage at Tony.

"You going somewhere important?" he asks.

"Yes," Tony snaps.

Steve smiles like Tony's playing into his hand and says, "Should I go ask Pepper what's on your calendar for--" he looks at his watch "--8am on a Sunday?"

Tony smacks the horn in petulant protest.  "I'm going on a drive, Steve.  You wouldn't understand.  Actually, the Interstate Highway System wasn't even conceived until the 50's.  That makes it actually inevitable that you are woefully uneducated on American wanderlust and car culture."

"Yep," Steve says, hopping gracefully into the passenger seat beside Tony.  "It does.  You want to show me?"

Tony sputters wordlessly at this moment of complete social terrorism.  He can't kick Steve out of his car without making a very large scene and making it look like _he's_ the unreasonable dick.  "Fine," Tony says, with bad grace.

It turns out Steve is a total junkie for fast cars on smooth roads, which Tony should have predicted but didn't.  They shake off the sparse Sunday morning church traffic and speed in flagrant violation of traffic laws, while Steve sprawls in the leather seat, his big shoulders relaxed, the wind whipping through his boy scout haircut and making him look almost laid back.

"I know you don't like the dog," Steve says, when Tony pulls off the highway to put gas in the tank.

"No, no, I like the dog fine," Tony lies.  He kills the ignition and gets out to pump the gas himself, pleased they aren't in Jersey so he can do this small car maintenance himself.  In the minivan across from them, a small girl stares openly at him and his car.  He flashes a charming smile at her and she presses her shoulder against the window so he can see the Iron Man temporary tattoo there.

"Tony," Steve says, with enough gravitas that Tony turns to look at him.  He looks earnest and kind in the light gold mid-morning sunlight.  "It's okay if you hate the dog."

Tony gives up.  "It's not that Freedom is a bad dog.  I'm just…dogs.  Not exactly my area." he says.  It feels good to admit.

"We can find him a new home," Steve says.

Tony almost, _almost_ , says _yes please take the little biting terror out of my home/workplace, I'll build you three motorcycles and a new suit of body armor_.  But that would ruin the drive and his whole morning would turn into a fight.  That would be a shame, because this has been nice.  Steve is fiddling with his sunglasses -- he's pulled them off his face and is folding and unfolding one arm in a slow, steady fidget.

Tony realizes that Steve has probably always wanted a dog and never been allowed to have one.

"Fuck it," Tony says.  "Let the team keep their dog, I'll go on some consulting trips and buy all new furniture.  I'm one of the top ten richest people on earth, I can literally buy couches faster than the little bastard can chew them up."

"That's really good of you," Steve says, and then mercifully the gas spigot clunks and Tony can busy himself with credit cards and receipts instead of coming up with an emotionally appropriate reaction to that.

 

*

 

Of course, as soon as Tony agrees to keep the dog, he's slammed with house arrest.

The megalomaniac du jour is making good on his death threats and Tony Stark is next on his list.  Tony's first instinct is to suit up and _destroy him_ , but the team won't let him.  Natasha threatens to put him in a headlock and give him the swirly to end all swirlies.  Tony isn't sure he wants to experience that.

So he's stuck in Avengers tower alone with the dog while the rest of the team goes out and fights crime.

He tries locking Freedom out of his workshop (it's full of big puppy-crushing metal machines, this is very reasonable!) but Freedom sits at the top of the stairs right outside the door and cries.  Tony goes out multiple times to make sure the puppy isn't suffering from a real physical injury.

Eventually, he caves and builds a hover-pen.  He's been thinking about how to use the repulsor technology to make things like super-stable wheelless stretchers for disaster relief efforts, and a puppy hover-pen is sort of like a prototype.  It's not the worst; while he's thinking he can reach over and scratch Freedom on the belly.

When he needs to unwind his brain, Tony rigs up Dummy with a tennis ball and lets Freedom play fetch with the robot.  Overhand throwing is a tricky engineering problem and Tony feels smug about solving it.

Freedom drops the tennis ball at Tony's feet and bounces expectantly.  "No no no," Tony says.  "I engineered an entire learning AI to play fetch with you.  I don't pick up drooly tennis balls, I have people and robots for that."

Freedom whines until Tony nudges the ball with his foot.

The rest of the team drags their bruised and exhausted bodies into the tower to recuperate at odd hours.  Arrivals never fail to set Freedom off in a cacophony of yips and barks.  He's almost better at marking comings and goings than Jarvis.

Tony leans in the doorway to the communal kitchen, watching Natasha and Thor spoil the puppy, feeding him scraps of fried rice from the takeout they're eating straight out of the carton.  It's three in the morning, but all the lights are on.   The Avengers kitchen is an always-open kind of establishment.

"You're going to make that dog barf in Clint's gym bag again," Tony warns.

Natasha raises an eyebrow.  "Honestly, I say anything that encourages Clint to pick up his workout gear is preferred."

"You know that we have a chef who makes healthy vitamin-filled meals," Tony says, "and also packs the fridge with gourmet salads and heatable meals literally every morning."

"Yes," Thor says between mouthfuls, chewing politely on his rice the way Jane taught him.  "But we encountered a cart labeled Le Anh's Chinese Food, and then one called the _Real_ Le Anh's Chinese Food, and Natasha declared us honor-bound to determine if one had a superior chicken fried rice."

"Tony says these things because he wishes he could still survive on Fritos and protein shakes, but his frail body would betray him," Natasha says, which is _rude_ and _untrue_ , Tony could eat only Fritos if he wanted.  He's just an adult who appreciates the occasional vegetable.

Freedom takes advantage of their conversation to leap for an unwatched takeout box.  He drags the box off the counter by one of the open flaps and bolts out of the kitchen, trailing grains of rice.

Three superheroes sprint after him, hollering.

 

*

 

A week later, while the Avengers-sans-Tony hold a regroup briefing and share tactical information, a minion breaks through the floor-to-ceiling window in an attempt to ambush Tony.  She quickly realizes her mistake and hoofs it back out the window on her laser-levitation-heelies, but not before the Hulk makes an appearance and ruins Tony's couch.

Tony, who was in his workshop during the brief attack, starts a chart to track couch destruction.  Avengers: 2 (counting Thor's birthday extravaganza complete with sofa fire), Freedom: 3.

Tony decides to make Steve a new suit of body armor, because he figures Steve can handle the extra weight while he refines the material to make it lighter for their less-enhanced members.  Steve enters the workshop warily -- Tony thinks he maybe had some bad experiences with engineers back when he was fighting super-Nazis during his gritty war period.  Tony's workshop, however, has been softened by Freedom's constant presence.  It's littered with tennis balls and several dog beds.  When they enter, Freedom is playing tug-of-war with Hey You, making a commotion of play-growls and mechanical whirrs.   Steve relaxes.

"Do you have a tape measure?" Steve asks.

Tony waves a dismissive hand.  "Don't be so primitive."  He makes Steve stand in the middle of a 3D scanner and tweaks his posture so the scanner can get all his measurements in one sweep.  Steve's gotten leaner in his back and shoulders since they've started training stealth and agility as a team.  Tony is careful not to do any more touching than he absolutely has to, trying not to send signals like "wow, muscles, wow."  Steve stands rock-still and lets Tony pull his wrist away from his side.

"There, you're perfect, don't move," Tony says, and presses a button.

Freedom trots into the workshop as the scan finishes, his nails clicking briskly across the concrete floor.  Tony watches, amused, as Steve tries not to move while Freedom bounces around his knees.

"The scan's finished, we're done," Tony says, a little later than he could have.

Steve kneels down to say hello to Freedom while Tony pulls up his fresh 3D virtual representation of Captain America, spinning it around to check for holes or blurry sections.  It looks flawless, so he files it away for later.

When he looks back at Steve and the dog.  Freedom is rolling around in Steve's lap, clearly torn between wanting to chew on Steve's fingers and wanting to get belly rubs.  Steve looks relaxed and happy.  He's got a scrape on his temple from fighting a super villain that Tony isn't allowed to pummel, but he looks like all his stiffness has melted away. 

Tony didn't grow up a dog person, but he feels tentatively willing to try.

 

*

 

Tony is awoken from a well-deserved morning sleeping in by someone knocking persistently on his door.  Tony opens the door to his bedroom and scowls.

"Look man, I drew the short straw," Bruce starts, and Tony knows that the rest isn't going to be good.

"Is something on fire?" Tony groans.

"You can't blow up at me, because I'm dangerous when I get into arguments," Bruce continues, because he likes to play the Other Guy card when he thinks he might get yelled at.  Usually Tony admires complete willingness to be a manipulative jerk, but right now he's grumpy and he just wants to know if he has to evacuate.

"Freedom got into your workshop while you were asleep, because somebody left the door unlocked, and let's not start throwing accusations about who, okay?  But he got into some wires and he made a bit of a mess."

Tony whips a Starkphone out of the pocket of his pajama pants and orders Jarvis to stream him a live feed of his workshop.  Some prudent soul has removed Freedom from the wreckage, but it's bad.

The control panel for one of his robots is torn open and the guts of a truly complicated circuit board are strewn across the concrete floor.  Plus, the half-assembled first attempt at Steve's new body armor suit is shredded from ankle to thigh.

"I _hate_ that dog!" Tony shouts, headed for his workshop at a sprint.  "He is never allowed in my workshop  _ever_ again, is that clear?  I want it perfectly, crystal clear to everyone.  Jarvis, if that animal puts one paw past my threshold you set off a full-building alarm.  I don't care if it wakes up the entire block, okay?"

Steve calls Darcy and asks her to dogsit while Tony has his tantrum.  He actually uses the word _tantrum_ on the phone multiple times.  Tony knows because Steve pointedly made the call while he and Tony were in the kitchen together, presumably to rub how ridiculous he's being in his face.

Tony stalks out of the kitchen and tries to remember who left the workshop last the previous night, himself or Steve.  He's sure it was Steve.

He spends the rest of the day picking up the damage Freedom has done and throwing every tennis ball he finds in the incinerator.

 

*

 

At the end of the day Darcy wanders down to his workshop, holding Freedom in her arms and standing carefully outside the open door.  "Hey Mr. Stark," she says.

"Hey Darcy, it's just Tony, even when I'm paying you to watch a nightmare dog," Tony says.

"Cool, Tony," Darcy says.  "I'm gonna put Freedom to bed in his crate and go make sure Jane's remembered that the biomedical library closes at eleven."

"Jane's into medicine now?" Tony asks, confused.

"Biophysics!" Darcy says.  "Jane is weird."

"Huh," Tony says, turning a piece of ruined circuit board over in his hands.

"Hey Tony?" Darcy says.  Darcy is young and charming and absolutely unstoppable when she has something she wants to say, so Tony looks up and waits for her to continue.  "I had this roommate in my first year of college.  She was real strange, smelled like herbs and stuff all the time, and we didn't get along.  She cooked the worst tofu scrambles on this little hot plate, and one time she tried to dry her shoes in our microwave and set our dorm room on fire.  I lost, like, my favorite scarf and a really good tube of lipstick in that fire.  I spent a semester really hating her.  But it turned out that she knew all the cool places you could get to on campus that you weren't supposed to be, like roofs and steam tunnels and the basement of the library, and her friends were all super cool and fun.  So after winter break I figured out how be friends and also how to make sure I didn't smell like bad curry even when our whole room did.  And, y'know, it ended up making me a lot happier than hating her did.  Just saying."

"Thanks, Darcy," Tony says, appreciating her heavy-handed metaphor for the effort, if not for the content.  "I'm gonna do a couple more tests down here."

She nods and turns to go, and then stops.  "Wait, hang on, oh!  Thor texted, he says WE ARE CLOSING IN, WISH US ALL LUCK AND VALOR.  Dude needs to un-figure out caps lock.  I think that means they've almost caught the guy and you can go outside again soon!"

"Thanks, Darcy," Tony says again.  She extracts one hand out from under Freedom to twinkle her fingers at him in goodbye.

 _Youths_ , Tony thinks.

The robot isn't getting re-wired tonight.  Tony scrubs a hand over his face and tries not to get nostalgic about drinking beers with Rhodey after hours in the MIT robotics lab, pushing the intact version of this same circuit board across a table, feeling lit up and excited about making something useful and responsive.  Or, too late, now he's nostalgic.  Tony is so mad at Freedom he could spit.  Just when he thought -- whatever.  He doesn't like any dogs, he will never like dogs, it's official.

Tony remembers some black dust falling out of the bell housing of the old vintage Firebird.  Maybe changing out a clutch will be distracting.  Yeah.  He's gonna do that.  He's gets the car all jacked up and is on his back, elbow deep in undercarriage, when he discovers that this car was put together by an idiot and if he unhooks the transmission it's going to fall on him.  Dammit.  Rigging up the right supports will take an hour and it will be really boring.  However, thinks he has a workaround.  Tony hasn't got the arm strength to hold up a transmission currently, but if he just snaps his fingers he can call part of the suit from under the car.

Tony suits up from shoulder blade to fingers and, yes, it works like a dream to support the car, he is very clever and efficient.  Possibly the cleverest.  He goes back to unscrewing the housing around the clutch with his naked hand while the suited arm does the heavy lifting.

Something shifts.  There's an ominous clunk.  Tony ignores it and undoes the last screw.

Half of the car's innards collapse on top of his suited up arm.  The suit throws a structural damage warning and seizes up.  He tries to voice activate the release protocols but, no, he'd been working new security measures into them last week and they're disabled.  Tony yanks helplessly on the suit, but short of dislocating his shoulder and breaking several bones in his wrist, he is well and truly trapped.

If he just had access to his computer system, he could type in the release codes manually, or dismiss this damage warning and call the rest of the suit.  This is why he's not supposed to operate the suit without the helmet.  Tony Stark is a moron.

He calls for Dummy to fetch him a tablet but Dummy is currently destroyed.  He calls for Hey You but Hey You is also out of commission because Tony'd opened it up to see if he could cannibalize or copy any parts to fix Dummy.

Tony groans.  He cannot spend the night prone on a concrete floor; his back will never be the same.

This is all the stupid dog's fault.  Which gives Tony an idea.

He asks Jarvis to disable the anti-dog workshop alarm and to remotely unlock Freedom's crate.  Then he waits for a bit.  The dog does not appear.

"Hey Jarvis, could you call the dog?" Tony asks, feeling ridiculous.  He really is a smart guy, he has built his own robot wait staff, and here he is reduced to calling Lassie for help.

"Of course, sir," Jarvis says.  Distantly, from the other floor, Tony hears Jarvis say,  "Freedom, come here boy.  Come here.  Good boy."

Freedom skids into the workshop, panting and bright-eyed.  He looks thrilled to see Tony and runs over to crawl onto Tony's chest and lick his beard.  "Hey, Freedom," Tony says weakly between puppy kisses.  "I need you to do something for me, okay?"

Freedom whines and tilts his head.  He's adorable.  Tony hates him.  "This is your fault," he reminds the dog.  "This entire situation is absolutely your fault and I am completely blameless.  Now, fetch me a tablet, over there.  Go.  Fetch!"

Freedom leaps off of Tony's chest and goes to snuffle around where Tony is pointing.  He doesn't find any tennis balls, so he bounces back to Tony's side with nothing.

"C'mon, Freedom, _fetch it_ ," Tony says.

Freedom brings him a screwdriver.

"Please fetch my tablet," Tony says.

Freedom brings him a tennis ball.  Apparently one had escaped incineration.

Tony leans his head back on the concrete floor.  It is hard and cold.  "Please, Freedom."

Freedom brings him a piece of Steve's new protective suit prototype and wags his tail. 

Tony is defeated.  He balls the scrap of Steve's suit into a makeshift pillow one-handed and shoves it under his head.  Freedom yawns and curls up in the space between Tony's neck and his un-suited shoulder.  "You're useless," Tony informs the dog.  Freedom responds by licking his hair repeatedly, until it sticks up in a stiff dog-spitty tuft.

 

*

 

Tony wakes up remarkably stiff with the entire team standing over him.  Freedom sprawls over his chest, snoring.  "Rescue me," he pleads.

Clint picks up Freedom and Natasha fetches him his tablet.

Tony unlocks the suit's security protocols and with Thor and Steve's help escapes from under the Firebird.  His joints all scream in protest when he gets up.  Tony hobbles as quickly as he can to the secret stash of Aleve he keeps in a desk drawer.  Someone snickers and Tony spins around (carefully) to shoot his sprier colleagues a dirty look.  "The next person who laughs at me is going to be working with Hammer Industries tech for the foreseeable future," he warns, pointing a finger at all of them.

"Sorry, old man," Clint says.

"Excuse you," Tony says.  "Steve is definitely older than me.  Thor is literally like a thousand years old, will you cool it with the age-based insults?  Honestly."

"The good news is we eliminated the super villain threat," Bruce says helpfully.  His shirt says _I <3 NY_ and still has the size sticker on it.  One of these days Tony is going to design a super stretchable fabric so New York City can have a break from big green Hulk nipples.

"Thank you, _Bruce_ , for being on task," Tony says.

"You're free to leave the tower as you wish," Steve confirms.  "No more death threats."

Tony has one more question.  "So, did all of you come down here together to find me, or--"

Clint beams.  "Nope!  I found you taking a floor-nap with Freedom," he says.

"And instead of waking me up, you…"

"Got the rest of the team together so we could watch you cuddle adorably with a puppy?  Yes."

"Lovely," Tony says.  "You're all great friends.  Also, you're all fired."

That evening, Tony realizes that he hasn't seen Freedom in a while.  Fearing for the integrity of his possessions, Tony goes hunting for his dog.  

He finds Freedom in the kitchen, zipped into a backpack on Steve's back, with only his head sticking out.  Steve is making a super-omelet for dinner.  Tony counts seven cracked eggshells littered around the counter before Steve notices him.

"He wouldn't stop pestering me," Steve admits, smiling apologetically at Tony.

Freedom squirms and sticks one paw out of the backpack.  Tony comes over and pats his head in sympathy.  "It's tough when your actions have consequences, huh?" he says to the dog.

Steve waggles one foot in irked demonstration.  Freedom has chewed holes in his sock from toe to ankle.  "Someone has taught him that if he chews on your feet he'll get cooking scraps."

"Don't blame me!" Tony says, raising his hands in the air.  "Definitely blame Thor and Natasha.  I am the very example of doggy discipline.  As, I see, are you, Mr. Papoose."

They fritter around in the kitchen together in amicable silence for a while, Steve reaching around Tony to fetch ingredients, Tony elbowing Steve out of the way to get at the coffee maker.

"Hey, Tony, about the dog," Steve says, putting down the frying pan and rubbing at the back of his neck with one hand, "if you want, I talked to Darcy and she'd love to take him.  I think her actual words were 'look out Muscles, I am totes prepared to steal this adorable dog from you.'  She'd take good care of him, and we could all visit.  It'd be okay with the team.  I'm sorry we pressured you into keeping a dog you don't like."

"What!" Tony says, putting down his coffee in indignation.  "No!  You don't get to give away our dog just because he chewed holes in your sock, Steve, seriously.  You can buy new socks.  I will buy you new socks.  Do you want navy, black, or flag-patterned?  I'll put in an order for all three, hey, Jarvis!"

Steve laughs and puts a hand on Tony's chest, his fingertips brushing the reactor.  "Okay, I get it."

"I can't believe you put a dog named Freedom in backpack jail," Tony says.

"Freedom isn't free," Steve deadpans, and Tony laughs so hard that Freedom starts to bark at him.

They don't talk again about re-homing Freedom.  Tony Stark admits, grudgingly, that he's more of a dog person than he thought.  He pretends that he and the rest of the Avengers don't spoil Freedom horribly, but it's a losing battle.  The dog stays.


End file.
